NYU Students Call for Overhaul of Albert Course Registration System
During course registration week, Albert becomes an unavoidable part of every NYU student’s life— and a frequent source of frustration. Albert plays a vital role as NYU’s online system for tasks like course registration, removing advisor holds, updating GPAs and uploading grades. Yet, complaints about its performance have persisted for years, with many students describing recurring issues such as website crashes, lagging pages and error messages.These challenges have led to growing calls for an overhaul of a system increasingly viewed as outdated and inefficient.
Meghana, a senior studying Integrated Design and Media, has been dissatisfied with Albert since her freshman year. “The design is confusing to navigate, and there’s no feedback to guide students through minor details,” she says.
Last semester, a technical glitch wrongly flagged her as missing prerequisites for two classes, even though she had completed them. By the time her advisor contacted NYU Albert staff to fix the issue, the classes were already full, forcing Meghana to rearrange her entire schedule. Her friends have faced similar glitches during registration, some of which delayed their progress toward meeting graduation requirements, she says.
May Clark, a sophomore preparing to study abroad in the spring, recounted a different frustration. “I got into absolutely no classes that were my original picks,” she said. Despite having priority registration for one course, she mistakenly selected a section at the wrong study-abroad location. Albert didn’t notify her of the mistake until two weeks later, leaving her scrambling to register for alternatives.
Given the wide-ranging complaints, improving Albert’s functionality appears to be at the top of many students' priority lists. Establishing a student advisory council or a focus group on the topic is one proposed method that could help streamline the system’s design and make it easier to navigate.
A frequently suggested upgrade would be to add explanatory hyperlinks for important features, functioning like a consistently available tutorial within the website. Another popular idea to improve Albert is a pre-registration system, visible to all students, which could give a better sense of course availability, avoiding the last-minute scramble to find classes that meet graduation requirements.
Updates to Albert’s interface would make the site more user-friendly, which could be accomplished by adding more sorting options and better tools to discover new classes. Cleaning up irrelevant content and improving the system’s layout could make the experience less overwhelming and more legible as well.
Looking forward, these changes would save time and create a smoother, more efficient registration process.
NYU Albert staff did not immediately respond to request for comment.